SAP has moved from its role as investor in the Crossgate B2B exchange to outright ownership of the service which allows companies to send and receive digitally signed, compliant PDFs or EDI invoices electronically.

It says the acquisition will enable networking at the enterprise level, providing an easy way for trading partners to collaborate, share data and automate processes that link customers and suppliers for streamlined B2B e-commerce.

Headquartered in Munich, Germany, Crossgate is used by more than 40,000 businesses across multiple industries in in North America, Europe, and the Middle East to securely exchange important documents and data.

Crossgate's e-invoicing services cover the entire process of inbound and outbound invoices, including signatures, compliance monitoring, integrated with customers' backend systems and finance processes.

Most recently, SAP agreed to resell and market the SAP E-Invoicing for Compliance application by Crossgate, which allows companies to send and receive digitally signed, compliant PDFs or EDI invoices electronically.

Analyst Jason Busch, believes with the Crossgate acquisition, SAP customers will have more complete choices than ever in the electronic invoicing/invoice automation area.

“Partner options from vendors like Hubwoo and Capgemini (IBX) will no doubt continue to provide SAP customers with alternatives to market leaders like Basware as well as P2P suite vendors like Ariba -- in addition to SAP's own offering. But SAP will now have a more complete offering to sell on their own paper as well, enhancing the capability of the current Open Text solution that they resell.

"Open Text and Crossgate are complementary solutions regarding e-Invoicing. Crossgate ensures the compliance aspects with tax and regulatory as the invoice comes in the door, and then Open Text shuttles the invoice through the process of exception management, workflow etc on through to payment. Open Text is an 'any source' solution regarding where invoices originate and can take them from the Hubwoo network, a Crossgate EDI connection, etc."